In 34 years of waiting for a
peaceful end to the partition of their country, the Irish from time to
time turn to thoughts of violence. When they do, they think of the
Irish Republican Army, an outgrowth of the Sinn Fein movement, which
has a romantic place in the Irish imagination. Last week, after the
I.R.A.'s audacious raid on a British army barracks just 40 miles west
of...